Compact Membrane Systems plans pilot at PBF’s Delaware refinery

Compact Membrane Systems (CMS), an industrial membrane manufacturer in Newport, Delaware, has announced the planned installation of a pilot system at the Delaware City refinery of PBF Energy for testing newly-developed membranes that effectively separate olefins from paraffins.

CMS says it has developed customized membranes to facilitate this difficult separation process utilized in refineries and petrochemical plants. While most olefin-paraffin separations are currently performed using capital- and energy-intensive distillation processes, membrane systems have the potential to provide less energy- and capital-intensive alternatives. 

In addition, membranes are modular and easily scalable, allowing capacity to be expanded without committing to constructing a new distillation column, the company says.

Using a perfluoropolymer material, CMS says it has developed high-performance, long-lasting membranes that provide high-purity streams of olefins to the end user. Unlike previous attempts to develop membranes for this purpose, the CMS material has been shown to last more than 300 days in laboratory tests and is resistant to poisons such as acetylene, hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide.

The pilot demonstration at the PBF refinery will be the first on-site test of the material and is targeted to take place in the second half of 2016. The purpose of the testing will be to prove feasibility of using membranes to separate C3 compounds in a process stream, the company says.

Performance characteristics will be monitored closely throughout the duration of the test. PBF is participating in the design and building of the test rig.

"CMS is proud to be at the leading edge of bringing innovative and transformational technology to the marketplace -- fundamentally changing the way industry provides some of our core building blocks and reducing the energy consumption in one of our biggest sectors," said Erica Nemser, CEO of CMS. "We look forward to proving out the technology in this first refinery pilot plant installation."